Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.
Reform, that we may preserve.
Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.
He had done that which could never be forgiven; he was in the grasp of one who never forgave.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.
History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.
It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.
The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.
The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.
History begins in novel and ends in essay.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.